| 77. "The French don't even have enough men to stand up against the Germans." True. That, in fact, is one of the things the Germans counted on in 1870, in 1914 and in 1939. France never fully recovered from the results of World War I. Here is what the French lost from 1914 to 1918: 1,357,800 Killed or died 4,266,000 Wounded 537,000 Prisoners and missing Total. 6,160,800The French had mobilized 8,410,000 men. They lost 6,160,800 -- or 73.3% No nation had ever suffered such a staggering loss. No nation had shown a greater record of sheer courage and tenacity. There was scarcely a family in France that did not number one or more of its members among the dead. World War I. left France weak and exhausted - for the second war Germany launched against her within a generation. The catastrophic effects of the first World War hit France particularly hard because they were added to the serious problem of a declining birth-rate. By 1939, largely because of the losses of World War I, the proportion of the French population under 20 years of age was small - and growing smaller ; the proportion of Frenchmen over 60 years of age was large - and growing larger. In 1940, after occupation, the Germans tried to cripple France permanently by a policy of deliberate starvation and the segregation of the sexes. The Germans held nearly 2,000,000 French men in German prison and work camps - away from French women. The German policy of malnutrition worked so well that in 1945, when the French government was drafting men to re-create a French army, it was found that 40% of all Frenchmen called up for physical duty were physically unfit. In 1942, at the height of German occupation, there were 500,000 more deaths than births in France. |